5+ years experience in the industry

Hannah Morris

Hannah grew up in Belgium and met her husband who is British in France. She has a background in pedagogics and working with children and adults with disabilities. After a few years of living in Belgium together and having her first daughter there they moved to the UK in 2010.

When her eldest daughter was born, she dipped her toes into babywearing, but didn’t really get on with it. Babywearing support was almost non-existent in Belgium.
When she was pregnant with her second baby, she wanted to give it another go, and bought a baby carrier at a baby show. Sadly her second daughter died during pregnancy.

Losing her daughter also had a profound impact on her subsequent pregnancy and the need to keep her third daughter close after she was born, made carrying her almost a necessity. It was the only way to do the school run and babywearing became a way of life. Hannah also started volunteering at sling meets in Cambridge.

Just before having her fourth daughter, she trained as a babywearing peer supporter with Born to Carry.

In 2016 Hannah completed her Slingababy consultancy course and started Hold Me Close Consultancy, so she could support parents and carers to use slings and carriers as an excellent parenting tool.

In the summer of 2017 Hannah joined the team at East Kent Slings, helping out and running sling meets and workshops in the Ashford area.

In December 2017 her fifth daughter gave her the chance of practising all her consultancy skills with a newborn all over again and 2 and half years later they are still enjoying the wonderful world of carrying.

Hannah is also a director at the Association of Carrying Educators and Sling Libraries CIC and is hoping this new organisation to be a great benefit to the whole carrying industry to improve safety standards and increasing public confidence in safe carrying.

Jess Hippey

Jess is an experienced carrying consultant based in Aberdeen, Scotland. As a mum to two boys who both had severe reflux, carrying was the only thing that soothed. Jess saw a need for parents to be able to try carriers on in person, not just at group sessions, but in the comfort of a home – and so Close and Calm was born. Jess has trained with several Baby Carrying schools, and became a Born to Carry trainer, delivering her first Peer Supporter courses in 2017.

Her vision for Close and Calm, is to impact the community with the benefits of carrying, to make carrying a mainstream occurrence. It is a vision to see Post Natal Depression reduced, babies’ settled, and community built as people are more free and able to venture out. Jess wants to see calm restored to the homes of newborns – and parenting becoming an exciting and encouraging period, instead of one of concern, loneliness and isolation. Through her grass roots connections with parents, caregivers and healthcare practitioners, she wants to set the foundation for the local community, in normalising the safe and regular use of carriers.

With the introduction of the Scottish Baby Box and Stretchy Wrap included, Jess supports and trains both NHS staff and parents to see a safe and high level of uptake of the carrier and provides drop in sessions demonstrating usage – aiming to capture a wide audience, both those who are keen and those who are unsure, by providing a safe, reassuring and neutral venue for people to observe, learn, and meet with other parents –to see that they’re not alone. She also works every week in her local neonatal unit, helping to promote and facilitate Skin to Skin care. Jess has written for the Close Enough to Kiss Babywearing Magazine, for Oscha Slings and her own website and works as a consultant for Oscha Slings, demonstrating their wraps and carriers to customers at events and answering carrying questions.

Jess enable parents, caregivers and healthcare practitioners to safely carry babies and children, through education, hiring of carriers, access to expert support and advice, and delivering training. She also works to promotes the benefits of carrying, recognising the impact that it has on children, caregivers and communities, raising both the profile and the accessibility of carrying in Scotland. Jess also runs a ‘Carriers without Barriers’ scheme ensuring that all families can access a carrier and has worked with Social Services to implement this scheme.

Jess is able to offer tailored training by request, and has a particular interest in training NHS Staff and healthcare practitioners, nurseries, childminders and local healthcare practitioners, as well as working with manufacturers to provide feedback on their carriers.

Lizzie Start

Lizzie is an experienced educator and mother of two living in Essex. She has a passion for supporting and empowering parents, and is an advocate for responsive parenting. Her ultimate aim is to change the way people view parenting, to improve outcomes for babies and children.

Lizzie was born in England but grew up in Belgium, Austria and Saudi Arabia, before returning to the U.K. for university. She trained as a primary school teacher with a specialism in early years, and also gained a qualification in adult learning. After settling for a few years in London and Essex, she moved to Norway when her first baby was four months old, and along with a friend, founded Oslo Sling Library in early 2015. She returned to the U.K. in September 2016 and gave birth to her second son, before establishing her own sling library and consultancy in Southend-on-Sea. She is a qualified infant feeding peer supporter, and alongside her sling library work she runs a weekly parenting support group at Do It Like A Mother HQ, where she also manages the venue.

Lizzie has trained with several babywearing schools and has been teaching peer support courses since 2017. She joined the Born to Carry team in 2018 and has trained almost 100 peer supporters to date. She enjoys attending parenting and babywearing events, and has been invited to run workshops at large-scale events in London and Norway. Most recently she organised the education programme at The Wrap Show (June 2019) and spoke to a gathering of international babywearing consultants at the Norwegian national babywearing conference, Nasjonalt Baeretreff (September 2019).

Lizzie loves to travel and is thrilled to be able to offer peer support training across Europe as required, as well as around the UK. She also hosts regular courses at Do It Like A Mother HQ. She is able to offer bespoke training to childcare and education settings, as well as to babywearing dance teachers upon request.

Rosie Knowles

Rosie is a mum of 2, a practising GP (family doctor) and has been a babywearing educator for many years. She is the author of the 2016 Why Babywearing Matters book, and a passionate advocate of using carriers to build secure attachment relationships between children and their carers. With the Carrying Matters resources, she focuses on providing accessible information and education about this for parents and the professionals who support them, empowering and encouraging them to be the agents of such change, for the overall health and wellbeing of the wider society. She has won several awards for her work in this field and writes widely on the topic. She lectures on babywearing throughout the UK and Europe.

She has been trained by several babywearing schools, and she and her team have helped many thousands of families through the Sheffield Sling Surgery, a consultancy and sling library service first set up in 2013. The Sling Spot retail shop opened in 2015. She has been training peer supporters through the Born to Carry Initiative since 2014, and also trains health care professionals and babywearing consultants.

She is the founder of the Building Bonds Project. It aims to break down many of the barriers to babywearing, by fitting and donating slings and carriers to families in health, social or financial difficulties, who are unable to source their own carrier easily.

Rosie is able to offer tailored training by special request, particularly for health care professionals, due to her medical background and extensive experience working with families.

Anne McEwan

Originally from The Netherlands Anne has lived in the UK since 2001. Anne has been helping parents use slings safely and comfortably since early 2005, initially on a peer support basis and from 2008 as a trained babywearing consultant. In 2011 Anne worked as a trainer for a UK school delivering babywearing consultancy courses. Anne now provides sling hire and consultations through Wrap My Baby and peer support training through Born to Carry. Anne has a special interest in families where one or more members has special or additional needs and has extensive experience in this area.

Anne is one of the directors and the founder of Born to Carry.

Anne ran Natural Mamas, the largest babywearing and natural parenting forum in the UK for 10 years ( 2008-2018). Anne writes for magazines and blogs including Nurture Magazine an Australian parenting magazine about babywearing and has spoken and hosted workshops at national and international events ( Carrying Symposium 2014, Carry on London 2014, Gentle Parenting conference 2013) Anne also works for Integra as an in house babywearing consultant.

Anne is able to offer tailored training by special request. This includes : Back carrying workshops for professionals, Special and additional needs carrying and Safety in language and action.